Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
Burghardt Tenderich
USC Annenberg Innovation Lab.1
Version 010113
January 2013
1
This paper is based on the work of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab in the fall of 2012 and it has
benefitted from input provided by Henry Jenkins.
Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
Introduction
Recent advances in Internet and consumer technologies and new practices of networked consumption
have changed the patterns of communication between brands and their publics. Everyday people – as
individuals and communities – are appropriating, remixing, and recirculating brand icons in ways that
are often beyond the control of those who have historically shepherded the brand message: sometimes,
in ways which lowers the cost of spreading the word about new products and services, sometimes in
ways which challenges corporate claims. Some of these transactions look like “user-generated content”
and others look like “piracy” or “ad-busting.” In this atmosphere, corporations need to embrace new
engagement strategies, ones which increase the range of possible and permissible meanings associated
with brands, ones which open up valid channels of communication with all stakeholders, and ones which
play out across the full range of possible communication channels. Engagement has become a key buzz
word in the 21st century, whether we are discussing news, entertainment, education, politics, and lastly,
but not least, branding. If old branding models were based on tight control over the circulation and
messaging, such controls are no longer practical or desirable in a world where if it doesn’t spread, it’s
dead. But, there’s still much we do not know about how branding will work in this new and evolving
environment.
In the midst of a period of profound and ongoing media transformation that will rewrite the rules
around branding and strategic communication, a new method of cross-channel communication is
emerging, dubbed by the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab as transmedia branding. The Lab has formed a
new research group, a co-operation between academia and industry, to explore how the emergence the
principles of transmedia storytelling are being applied to branding. Initially, the group will focus on the
core elements of transmedia branding and will offer a perspective on what the future of branding may
look like. Can this new engagement through multiple media channels increase the effectiveness of
branding?
The purpose of this article is to provide an initial framework for design elements and design principles of
transmedia branding. It aims to provide an overview that will facilitate ongoing conversation on the
topic, rather than an in-depth discussion of each element and principle. Many of the concepts
referenced below have been deeply analyzed in the forthcoming book Spreadable Media by Henry
Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green2.
The Transmedia Concept
The term transmedia was coined in 1991 by then-USC professor Marsha Kinder, while the transmedia
storytelling concept was developed by current USC Annenberg professor Henry Jenkins.3 He describes
transmedia storytelling as “a process in which integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically
across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment
experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” 4
Transmedia storytelling has been successful as a means of developing Hollywood entertainment
franchises, independent and public media productions, and most recently, new approaches to public
relations and advertising.
2
Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green, Spreadable Media: Creating Meaning and Value in a
Networked Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2013)
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedia_storytelling
4
http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html
2
Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
Building on this description, transmedia branding can be defined as a communication process in which
information about a brand is packaged into an integrated narrative, which is dispersed in unique
contributions across multiple media channels for the purpose of creating an interactive and engaging
brand experience.
The transmedia branding framework proposes that for an effective unified, coordinated corporate
communication strategy today, collective intelligence, participatory audience techniques and spreadable
content are crucial. From the storytelling perspective, transmedia innovation can enhance the
effectiveness and reach of the brands in key ways such as:
 Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Deepen and Evolve the Brand: Transmedia storytelling
techniques can use the collective intelligence of brand fans (and employees) working together to
deepen, enrich, and even map the details of the brand’s “storyworld” across media and from many
different perspectives. These techniques embrace the role of active audiences to help collectively
co-create, expand, and sustain communication in ways that can effectively capture and leverage the
value of today’s fragmented and ever-changing media landscape.
 Promoting Participation as a Brand Value: Transmedia storytelling’s participatory focus can both
help strengthen brand story engagement for consumers and employees and also promote
meaningful participation (and the sense of brand loyalty that brings) as a core part of the brand’s
values.
 Generating Spreadability: One of Henry Jenkins’ latest concepts is that of spreadability, an
alternative to the “viral” model of marketing and corporate communication. Spreadability stresses
the active choice of individuals and networks to pass along content they find socially meaningful.
Transmedia collective intelligence and participatory techniques can greatly help the spreadability of
brand messages.
Why Transmedia Branding?
Since somewhere between the end of World War II and the early days of Mad Men – late forties, midfifties – consumers in Western societies have been bombarded with brand messages from every
possible channel: the never-ending onslaught of TV and radio commercials, newspaper and magazine
ads, direct mail, billboards, announcements at sports events, and more recently emails and online
advertising. Many consumers view these and other marketing events as a necessary evil they tolerate in
order to gain access to subsidized news and entertainment.
Advertisers, arguably, are equally dissatisfied with the status quo as they spend enormous amounts of
money broadly across all channels. As the saying goes, 50% of all advertising is wasted, but we don’t
know which 50%. The core problem is that mass advertising cannot cater to individual’s wants and
needs, leading to frustrated consumers tuning out or becoming irate at the most intruding forms of
advertising. Isn’t it bizarre that you have to ‘unsubscribe’ from unwanted email lists, which you never
subscribed to in the first place?
Doc Searls in The Cluetrain Manifesto distilled the core problem into one sentence: “There is no market
for your messages.” Instead, he argues, “markets are conversations”5. These principles are at the core of
transmedia branding: Rather than bombarding target audiences with unwanted and redundant brand
messages, brands engage audiences in compelling conversations, across many different channels, in a
way that consumers can and are encouraged to participate, interact directly with the brand or with
other audience members, create content, and become part of the story.
5
http://www.cluetrain.com/book/markets.html
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Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
I’m On a Horse
To date the most iconic transmedia branding campaign was Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice The man your
man could smell like in 2010, created by Wieden+Kennedy. It was kicked off with a humorous
commercial with former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa promoting the Old Spice Red Zone body wash in a
self-deprecating fashion. The spot ends with Mustafa pointing out that suddenly he now sits on a horse.
Originally released on YouTube the week before Superbowl 2010, the spot was promoted as a must-see
ad. The commercial spread across social media like wildfire, achieving 20 million You Tube views in just
three days. It was widely discussed in the media and organically promoted by celebrities via Twitter.
The next major campaign component was a sequence of 186 short videos, in which Mustafa, standing in
a bathtub wrapped in towel, responded to tweets by celebrities, members of the general public, and
specific online communities directed at the Old Spice Guy. These videos spread as people responded to
their surprise inclusion in a major advertising campaign. Moreover, numerous fans shot parodies and
posted them on YouTube, and Sesame Street created the ‘Smell like a Monster’ take-off.
Many cases studies have been written about The man your man could smell like, detailing the flurry of
creative content pieces, generated by both the brand and the online community. While the creativity
and spreadability of the campaign is impressive, so are the return-on-investment numbers as detailed by
Event Reports6:
 In the first six months after the launch of the campaign, Old Spice sales increased 27% year-to-year.
By the sixth month of the effort, month-to-month sales had increased 107%.
 2 billion-plus total campaign impressions since February 2010.
 40 million total video views in the campaign's first week.
 A 75% share of all brand conversations in the first three months of 2010 (with women having half
the conversations).
 The all-time most-viewed YouTube brand channel (and, with 170,000 subscribers, YouTube's top
subscription channel).
 3,000% increase in Twitter followers.
 2,000% increase in Google searches.
 800% increase in Facebook interactions.
 300% increase in traffic at oldspice.com.
Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
Successful campaigns appear to have a common set of building blocks, or design elements, that are
utilized to foster engagement between brands and their target markets. Transmedia branding
campaigns share a common set of design elements, which we have identified as: narratives,
participation and brands. Each of these notions relies on specific enabling elements, as outlined in the
figure below.
6
Geoffrey Precourt, Old Spice: 2010's Standout Campaign Under the Microscope, Event Reports
ANA Creativity, December 2010, p. 2 (downloaded from WARC)
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Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
Transmedia Branding Design Elements
Narratives
Participation
Brands
Memes
Media
Culture
Communities
Markets
Narratives
At its core, people are interested in stories that may be true or fictional, serious or funny, aspirational or
provocative, entertaining or thought-provoking – as long as they are engaging. Most importantly, such
stories are passed along when people find these narratives meaningful and emotionally engaging.
Spreadability is a key enabler of transmedia branding.
As the name transmedia suggests, these storylines travel across different media channels, in different
content forms, such as articles, videos, cartoons, etc. As an important principle, pieces of content that
collectively make up a narrative are dispersed in unique bits: when storylines become redundant, they
will stop spreading. On their journey, the story bits frequently move across channels and may become
altered in the process. For example, one unique element in The man your man could smell like was a
random tweet by a man asking the Old Spice Guy to propose to the man’s girlfriend on his behalf. Old
Spice Guy responded with a bathtub video doing as requested, which led to the man tweeting “she said
yes.” The tweet and a corresponding photo were picked up by Mashable.com, crossing the story over
into editorial media.
Memes represent a type of content that is particularly suitable for transmedia narratives because their
spreadable nature. Introduced by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a meme “conveys the idea of a
unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.”7 He cites as examples of memes tunes, ideas, catchphrase, clothes, fashions, etc. “leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can
be called imitation. Memes are “condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioral
associations that people can easily imitate and transmit to others.”8 Memes are central to the Old Spice
campaign, as well as to other transmedia branding examples that will be referenced below.
A narrative cannot exist – would not be heard, seen, read or experienced – outside a medium.
Therefore, the notions of narratives and media are inextricably linked. For our purposes, media
describes a broad variety of communication channels, ranging from interpersonal interactions to
pictures, music, art, letters, books, billboards, objects, and certainly traditional mass media as well as
and social media.
It’s important to note that the internet is not a prerequisite for transmedia branding. Transmedia
narratives have existed for as long as humans have communicated. For instance, the argument could be
made that today’s major religions since their inception have traveled the world as transmedia
narratives. However, today’s transmedia experiences are shaped in profound ways by emerging patterns
7
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford, 1989, p 192
Center for Communication and Civic Engagement.
http://ccce.com.washington.edu/projects/cultureJamming.html
8
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Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
of networked consumptions and grassroots production, as consumers play a more active role in shaping
how stories travel across the culture.
Participation
The notion of audience participation is the key concept that differentiates traditional one-directional
marketing communications from transmedia branding. People want to interact with spreadable
narratives, provided it’s the right storyline for the right audience, and they may actively help to localize
and reframe messages they think have potential interest within their communities. Participation covers
a wide spectrum of activities, ranging from passing on conversations to leaving comments on blogs or
articles to generating new content, parodies and additional storylines. In addition to creating, changing
and spreading content, effective participation relies on additional notions: culture, community and
policy.
As Grant McCracken points out, “corporations live and die by their connection to culture.”9 He refers to
culture as “the body of ideas, emotions, and activities that make up the life of the consumer.” Getting
culture right, he argues, can result in billion dollar swings for major consumer brands.10 The idea is that
brands need to be able to read popular culture in order to engage successfully with target audiences.
Obviously popular culture is in constant flux and has generational, ethnic, geographic and religious
dimensions that weigh heavily into how people react to brand communication.
Related to culture is the notion of brand community, defined as “a group of ardent consumers organized
around the lifestyle, activities, and ethos of the brand.”11 A common example is Harley-Davidson, whose
devoted fans transformed a near-death company of the eighties into a top-50 global brand 25 years
later. True fan communities curate brand attributes and may even, as in the case of Harley-Davidson,
transform the brand entirely as they feel strong emotional ownership. They may do so with or without
the support of the corporations that own the brands – there is only so much the owner can do to stop
them. Brand communities may congregate in the real world at club meetings or conventions, and/or
organize on the web. Extreme forms of communities are described as consumer tribes: “They do not
consume things without changing them; they cannot ‘consume’ a service without engaging in a dance
with the service provider, where the dance becomes the service. Participatory culture is everywhere.12”
Have you ever met a true fan of the Apple Mac OS?
Maybe the least obvious factor influencing participation is the notion of policy. However, it’s impact on
how widely and freely opinions and content are shared cannot be overstated. Policy regulates many
aspects of public life, such as the right of free assembly to copyright issues to net neutrality. Clearly, less
restrictive policies fosters participation, as people are allowed to freely gather, speak, change, create
and spread content.
9
Grant Mc Cracken, Chief Culture Officer, 2009 p. 13
McCracken (2009), p 1
11
Susan Fourier and Sarah Lee, “Getting Brand Communities Right,” Harvard Business Review, April
2009, p. 2
12
Bernard Cova, Robert Kozinets, Avi Shankar, “Tribes Inc.: The new world of Tribalism”, Consumer
Tribes, 2007, p. 2
10
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Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
Brands
Brands are what consumers buy, while products are what companies make. A brand is a promise that
the product will perform as per customer’s expectations.13 The words ‘companies’ and ‘customers’ in
this basic definition indicate brands are inherently connected to the notion of markets. People or
organizations create brands for the purpose of achieving success in the marketplace. A market should be
viewed as both, a physical or virtual place for conducting financial transactions in exchange for goods
and services or, in a political or social context, as a marketplace for ideas.
A brand most commonly refers to a consumer product or service. Other types of brands are products
and services targeting other businesses (B2B), as well as individuals, causes and ideas. As of now, most
transmedia branding campaigns have targeted consumer products and services, such as Old Spice.
An example of a transmedia-branded cause was Kony 2012, an initiative by the San Diego, Calif.-based
non-profit Invisible Children. Its goal has been the arrest and prosecution of Joseph Kony, a notorious
Ugandian warlord and human trafficker. The primary strategy was turning Joseph Kony into a celebrity,
so he no longer would be able to hide. They achieved this via meetings with policymakers, blogs and
twitter campaigns, and an enormously successful documentary video created for widespread
distribution on YouTube that garnered over 93 million views. In other words, the Kony 2012 campaign
turned the warlord into a (transmedia) brand14.
Individuals themselves can also turn into transmedia brands, and arguably Barack Obama serves as an
example. His persona and presidency comes with a crafted story line – the first African-American
president as a symbol for change, youth and liberal values – which has been altered by his opponents to
represent lack of economic achievement and a frame for a supposedly damaging healthcare reform,
dubbed Obamacare. Meanwhile his fans have created memes in the form of pop art images, such as the
stylized “Hope” poster which first surfaced in the fall of 2008 and since the 2012 election has been
altered to symbolize Governor Romney’s defeat. (As a presidential candidate, Romney had stated he
would cut federal funding for PBS, with a reference to Big Bird during a presidential debate, which
created the meme that the Sesame Street character was in trouble15.)
Photo Credit: Wikipedia, Twitter
13
http://www.managementstudyguide.com/what-is-brand.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
15
http://www.examiner.com/article/big-bird-meme-goes-viral-after-mitt-romney-promises-to-defundpbs
14
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Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
A few months after the Gangnam Style Korean pop song and video were released, a parody spread
showing Barack and Michelle Obama look-alikes performing Obama Gangnam Style. The Obama
transmedia storyline continues to evolve and changes the brand in the process.
Cultural Jamming of Brands
Not only proponents of a brand have the ability to contribute to and extend a brand storyline in a
transmedia context; the same can be achieved by activists. ‘Cultural jamming’ is defined as “an
organized social activist effort that aims to counter the bombardment of consumption-oriented
messages in the mass media”16: purposely change brand associations in order to achieve a negative
perception of brand, clearly in direct conflict with what the owners of a brand want it to stand for. This
type of activity frequently happens on the internet and across media. For example, in order to draw
attention to British Petroleum’s pursuit of Canadian tar sands, Greenpeace in the United Kingdom
launched an internet contest asking people to design and upload their interpretation of the BP logo.
“The winning logo will be used by us in innovative and exciting ways as part of our international
campaign against the oil company,” Greenpeace stated on the contest’s web site17. Participants created
1,926 variations of the logo, which were uploaded to a designated Flickr site where Greenpeace
explains: “Their nice green logo doesn't really seem to fit them too well, so we ran a competition to find
a logo that we could use to rebrand BP.”18
BP’s official logo vs. a hijacked logo created for Greenpeace’s contest
Natural vs. Crossover Transmedia Brands
Some types of brands come naturally into a transmedia existence. These brands not only have a story,
they are the story. This certainly applies to major narratives, such as the Star Wars or Harry Potter
franchises, or complex video games such as World of Warcraft.
The Harry Potter brand, for instance, was initially conceived as series of books, which were followed up
with a sequence of well-produced movies, which then naturally extended the product line into action
figures and toys. Meanwhile, fans created online and offline communities where people could dress and
act like the characters from Harry Potter. Parodies came to life, such as the very successful Potter
Puppet Pals. Their web episode of the Mysterious Ticking Noise achieved over 135 million views on
YouTube as of November 8, 2012. Universal Studios created the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at their
theme park in Orlando, Fla., which was announced in a lead article entitled “Wizarding World Revealed
to Muggles” in the Wizarding World News.19 In June 2011, author J. K. Rowling launched Pottermore,
16
Handelman, J.M. and Kozinets, R.V. (2004) Proposed Encyclopedia of Sociology entry on
‘Culture Jamming’. Unpublished manuscript. As cited in: Vince Carducci, “Culture Jamming: A
Sociological Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Culture 2006; 6; 116, p 1
17
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/tarsands/logo-competition.html
18
http://www.flickr.com/photos/greenpeaceuk/sets/72157623796911855/
19
http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/
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Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
allowing people to explore “the Harry Potter stories in a whole new way and discover exclusive new
writing from J. K. Rowling.”20
Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft exemplifies transmedia brands in the gaming world. The Warcraft
universe spans a variety of media driven by a singular running narrative. The most prominent of
Warcraft’s components is the massive multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (WoW) which
currently boasts over 10 million active subscribers21. The eight-year-old game has a loyal fan base that
not only consumes the media but also actively engages and participates in it. Player-made user interface
add-ons currently sit at over 3,000 on the gaming site Curse.com, YouTube hosts over 1 million usergenerated videos, several WoW novels have made the New York Time’s Bestseller List, and a movie is
currently in early pre-production22. Fans are further engaged at Blizzcon, a real-world convention that
celebrates Warcraft and Blizzard’s other transmedia franchises StarCraft and Diablo. In 2011 over
25,000 fans attended Blizzcon – many dressed as their in-game avatars – while over 800,000 unique
viewers watched from home through DirectTV pay-per-view23.
Media and entertainment brands are the story, and their transmedia nature enables them to engage
with pre-existing fan communities and cater to the culture of these communities.
However, most products or services that consumers or companies purchase do not come with a readymade story they want to share. Since a narrative is central to transmedia branding, companies are
presented with two options: create a story or join a story. Whichever route they choose, in order to be
consistent it is essential that the story – topic, tone, characters, etc. – is in alignment with the way a
brand speaks and behaves.
Old Spice wasn’t a story at the time The man your man can smell like campaign was conceived. Its brand
image was that of an old, stodgy product line, and the brand associations were carried by images and
symbols of early 20th century large sailing ships. When the campaign was created, it consistently carried
over both themes. Effectively utilizing self-deprecating humor gave the campaign an authentic, human
touch. For example, the Old Spice Classic shower gel is sold using the slogan "The original. If your
grandfather hadn't worn it, you wouldn't exist.24" In the initial campaign commercial, actor Isiah Mustafa
projects from a bathtub to a large sail boat and eventually lands on a horse. Throughout, the look and
feel of the campaign commercials is consistent with that of traditional Old Spice images.
The alternative to creating a storyline is joining with an existing one. If the right storyline is accessible, a
brand has the opportunity to leverage existing audiences, which increases the odds of effective
spreadability. In October 2012, one month before the release of the movie The Hobbit, Air New Zealand
20
http://www.pottermore.com/. For a critique, see Henry Jenkins, Three Reasons Why Pottermore
Matters …, http://henryjenkins.org/2011/06/three_reasons_why_pottermore_m.html
21
Richard Cobbett, Mists of Pandaria pushes World of Warcraft Back over 10 million subscribers,
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/11/08/mists-of-pandaria-pushes-world-of-warcraft-back-over-10million-subscriber-mark-but-for-how-long/ (November 2012).
22
William Bibbiani, The World of Warcraft Movie Is back On,
http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/193509-the-world-of-warcraft-movie-is-back-on (August
2012).
23
Ray V, Blizzcon 2011 World’s Largest Online Pay-Per-View Event, http://www.rayv.com/wp
content/uploads/2012/07/Blizzcon-LR.pdf (2011).
24
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Spice
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Design Elements of Transmedia Branding
launched a new air safety video staring many of the mythical species — hobbits, elves, dwarfs, orcs and
other monsters — from The Lord of the Rings movies, which relied on New Zealand for the outdoor
scenery. Elf flight attendants recite the full legally mandated text of an air safety announcement. The
video includes a quick appearance by the films’ director, Peter Jackson, who slips a ring onto his finger,
and promptly disappears.25
Transmedia Ethics
Transmedia branding raises a number of ethical issues, and therefore a priority for future work should
be ethical best practices. Several areas of ethical implication seem to emerge. The first one is the notion
of privacy, which has much been talked about in the context of social media. The production and
spreading of user-generated content bears risks of exposing private information about third parties. The
second area of ethical implication is the notion of truth and transparency. In the Art of the Heist, car
maker Audi stages a fake violent break-in into the Audi car dealership on Park Avenue, where two
individuals steal an Audi A3. This break-in is the beginning to an online and offline transmedia narrative
about this new product line. The day after the theft, at the New York auto show, instead of seeing
America’s first A3, attendees would see signs reporting the missing car. The ethical dilemma is best
summarized in a sentence taken from the official case study on YouTube: “If you had asked the
attendees at the show what happened, they would have shrugged, not knowing themselves if this was
real or not.26”
Transmedia Branding Research Group at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab
While still in its early stages, transmedia branding presents viable alternative to more traditional forms
of branding. The Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California has established a
research group tasked with exploring how transmedia branding continues to evolve. For more
information, visit http://www.annenberglab.com/ or email burghardt.tenderich@usc.edu.
Addresses for correspondence:
Burghardt Tenderich
burghardt.tenderich@usc.edu
Copyright statement:
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provide this article in open access format.
This means that, in accordance with the
principles of the Budapest Open Access
Initiative (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/),
you may freely copy and redistribute this article
provided you correctly acknowledge its authors
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###
25
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-air-new-zealand-hobbit-safety-video20121102,0,3338637.story
26
Transcribed from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5w2CNB9clw
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